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Hokitika Guardian, 15 April 1926, Page 1

TOO STIFF AFTER THE DOLE. LONDON. February 20. It. was stated last night that more of the 129 Durham miners imported into Derbyshire by the Stavely Coal and Iron Company will return home during the week-end, 31. having already left. “ They'd been to long idle to bed down to work easily,” declares a St.avelv colliery manager, but the men retort that “ Derbyshire conditions are not to our liking.” The men reinrJaiued ol the lack of amusements am! the penny more that hear costs locally, and they say that the conditions of work are not what were promised them. Mr David IT. Turner, agent for the Stavely Coal and Iron Co., told a reporter yesterday: “ One of the men told me, 1 I have been getting 365. a. week for doing imtliing and I am going back to it.’ Many of the men have been out of work for two years, and naturally when they got back again they were very stiff. The men made all sorts of trivial complaints—that the beer was a penny a pint dearer, that the streets were not lighted, and that the footpaths were not paved.” Mr G. E. Gent, Bishop Auckland, a local official of the Durham Miners’ Association, declared yesterday that the men had not been correctly informed as to the conditions of their work.